New Works

Flatbed Press Gallery
through October 15

Tim High, a printmaking professor at UT, says, "Great art... is borne out of an articulate and impassioned conversation between the eye, the intellect, and the heart." The conversation generated by his own work is a lively one. No one is excluded. You like color? He has it. You like pencil lines applied with skill? He knows how to draw. You like graphic imagery that evokes old-time posters yet leaves you scratching your head as to what the picture is about? Has he got a mermaid for you! You like translating French verse and studying Biblical passages printed upside down and sideways? Flatbed Press Gallery is the place to be.

The technical complexity of Tim High's new prints conveys the intricacy of his ideas even before the images come into focus. For his "Baudelaire Suite," High employs silk-screen printing, sews textured papers together, enhances the papers' translucency, and draws with Prismacolor pencils on each monoprint. (A monoprint is a unique printed image based on a template that can be re-used, sometimes in combination with other media, to make similar but not matching prints.) High has committed himself to producing seven monoprints for each image. All this effort is in service of the artist's fascination with Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal." High makes it look easy. Or rather, he allows the viewer to apprehend his work on a variety of levels. His pictures can be enjoyed in a purely sensory way or used to conduct a polemic on man's existence in the universe.

In my favorite monoprint, High adheres his image to a screen in such a way that it relaxes on the paper as though applied with a Chinese brush and ink. As serigraphy is most often recognized for its hard edges, unsubtle colors, and a surface texture limited by the fineness of the screen through which ink is squeegeed, these prints at Flatbed are a wonderful surprise. The exhibition also includes Prismacolor and enamel drawings in High's "Vanity Fair Series," which are more typical of the artist's precise style. They're technically perfect and tight, tight, tight. He describes this series as "bringing into a focus an intimate analysis of our contemporary cultural experience, as framed by current and prevalent examples of human folly and continued erosion of the moral and cultural landscape of our nation." This corresponding rigidity of image and idea may be why I prefer looking at the prints. -- Rebecca S. Cohen

Gee, I wish I'd paid better attention during the Baudelaire lectures in my college English classes. A little less napping during Sunday school wouldn't have hurt, either. I might have felt less dense as I viewed "Baudelaire Suite," a group of monoprints by UT printmaking professor Tim High. Luckily, High's explanations of these works, which are full of Baudelarian and Biblical references, saved me from embarrassment as I tried to decipher their meanings.

These colorful works are complex in content and technique, as in "To The Reader," which blends some racy romance ads, quotes from the Bible, a screaming skeleton, the Grim Reaper, and several butterflies; at the bottom is an excerpt from Baudelaire's "Au Lecteur." Heavy stuff. Once you read High's detailed accompanying statement, the components' relationships become a bit more clear, though the piece remains intense and somewhat dark.

Also featured in the show is High's "Vanity Fair Series," Prismacolor and enamel drawings presenting contemporary social ills in the setting of nocturnal carnival scenes. Again, High's intentions and messages are lofty and involved, covering issues from society's obsession with physical beauty to teen sex. "Unanticipated Misgivings," depicting an attractive teen-age couple looking pensive and uncomfortable outside a vibrant funhouse, touches on High's notion that modern teens too often shoulder adult decisions and responsibilities.

High's combination of social and scholarly thoughts with complex technique results in the kind of work that makes you think -- or makes you feel you should think -- about issues outside the realm of art. Heck, I might even take a class in Baudelaire. -- Cari Marshall